Cryptocurrency market cap remains in familiar $250bn range amid optimism

Bullish and optimistic sentiment has been sweeping through the cryptocurrency ecosystem over the past month with the combined market cap standing at $250 billion.

It bounced from this level on three occasions in the 2018 bear market while also becoming a level of support throughout 2019.

During the sell-off from 2019’s frenetic high of $390 billion, cryptocurrency’s market cap ranged between $350 billion and $250 billion for three months before a gruelling decline in September.

This demonstrates how crucial and pivotal the current range is, with a break above it potentially signalling a bull market in the coming months.

Much of it will depend on the direction of Bitcoin leading up to May’s halving event, which is expected to trigger a further hike in the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin commands a massive 65.2% of the entire cryptocurrency market cap, meaning that when a major event happens much of the attention will be focused on BTC and its respective trading pairs instead of altcoins.

The two previous Bitcoin halvings in 2012 and 2016 preceded a pair of staggering runs to new all-time highs, with the latest coming in December 2017 when the entire cryptocurrency market cap was just beneath $800 billion.

The theory is that due to block rewards for miners being halved, the industry is more likely to hold on to the extra Bitcoin being mined, thus drying up supply as demand inflates.

Another argument is that, as Bitcoin mining is relatively expensive, miners will be incentivised to drive the price of BTC to the upside so that the industry remains profitable.

A realistic target for cryptocurrency moving towards the halving would be $303 billion and $307 billion, although some analysts are suggesting that a new all-time high of closer to $1 trillion is not off the cards.

Pricing

Current live Bitcoin pricing information and interactive charts are available on our site 24 hours a day. The ticker bar at the bottom of every page on our site has the latest Bitcoin price. Pricing is also available in a range of different currency equivalents:

US Dollar – BTCtoUSD

British Pound Sterling – BTCtoGBP

Japanese Yen – BTCtoJPY

Euro – BTCtoEUR

Australian Dollar – BTCtoAUD

Russian Rouble – BTCtoRUB

About Bitcoin

In August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. On 31st October 2008, a paper was published called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. This was authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. To date, no one knows who this person, or people, are.

The paper outlined a method of using a P2P network for electronic transactions without “relying on trust”. On January 3 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence. Nakamoto mined block number “0” (or the “genesis block”), which had a reward of 50 Bitcoins.

More Bitcoin news and information

If you want to find out more information about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page. Here’s an article to get you started.

As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice.